The vaping illness epidemic that has your doctor concerned A patient visits a walk-in medical clinic after he was vaping with some friends. The doctor on duty assesses the situation and recommends the patient go to the emergency room. Many people are consuming marijuana by using vaping which uses a capsule inserted into a cigarette-like electronic device. Once charged, the oil in the capsule is inhaled as a smoke or water vapor and the effect of the marijuana is felt after one or two inhalations. Vaping the essence of tobacco or marijuana has been around for years, but this year something changed. Patients were showing up with an unexplainable lung illness leaving them unable to breathe. Vaping is quite common among teenagers and young adults. According to the NY Times, chemicals are used to extract the nicotine or the THC from marijuana and some of these solvents can be deadly. While many of the products are purchased from controlled distributors, some are purchased off the street and may have been mixed with something that can make you quite ill, as we are now finding out. Nobody knows the long term effect of vaping since the technology is relatively new. It may be as bad or worse than smoking a joint or some other type of inhalant. Vitamin E may be at the root of the problem since all of those who have fallen ill had vape products that contained vitamin E. Check out this growing story from the NY Times The Mysterious Vaping Illness That’s ‘Becoming an Epidemic’ A surge of severe lung ailments has baffled doctors and public health experts. By Sheila Kaplan and Matt Richtel Published Aug. 31, 2019 An 18-year-old showed up in a Long Island emergency room, gasping for breath, vomiting and dizzy. When a doctor asked if the teenager had been vaping, he said no. The patient’s older brother, a police officer, was suspicious. He rummaged through the youth’s room and found hidden vials of marijuana for vaping. “I don’t know where he purchased it. He doesn’t know,” said Dr. Melodi Pirzada, a chief pediatric pulmonologist at NYU Winthrop Hospital in Mineola, N.Y., who treated the young man. “Luckily, he survived.” Pirzada is one of the many physicians across the country treating patients — now totaling more than 215 — with mysterious and life-threatening vaping-related illnesses this summer. The outbreak is “becoming an epidemic,” she said. “Something is very wrong.” Read more